


Pacific Daylight Time

by osteogenitor



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Being a teenager SUCKS, Death, Depression, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Short Chapters, no beta cause im a boss bitch and dont need it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26984170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osteogenitor/pseuds/osteogenitor
Summary: ("How have I never seen you before?" He asks, smiling."I miss school a lot." She smiles back.)a story about processing grief and the stuff that happens when someone dies.
Relationships: Sokka/Yue (Avatar), background Aang/Katara
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is dedicated to the high school dropouts, suki/yue shippers, people who have had bone marrow transplants, pisces, fans of indie rock released from 2004-2009, people who do not observe daylight savings time, small town americans, kids in therapy, teens who pretend to know how to skate, manufacturers of dry pasta, people who sleep in jeans, gays, and YOU :^)

Sokka meets her at the end of the first day back from winter break.

She has long hair bleached white, not just blonde but actually white like a ghost. Her skin is tan but cool-toned. Sokka walks faster to catch up to her, until he's walking right next to her.

"How have I never seen you before?" He asks, smiling.

"I miss school a lot." She smiles back.

They're walking side-by-side down the main corridor that leads out of school. It's 3:30 in the afternoon and it's already almost dark. Outside the glass double doors, a kind of blue haze hangs over the landscape, broken only by the orange glow of high-pressure sodium lamps. There's only a thin grey line that separates the river from the sky, and there's only a seven inch distance between Sokka and the mysterious girl.

He's good at guessing measurements. He's in engineering technology a year early on instructor permission. Sokka is smart and cool and funny. He tallies these qualities up in his mind.

"My name is Yue." The girl says.

"I'm Sokka," Sokka says. "I like your hair." _Cliche._

Yue giggles. "Thank you, Sokka. I like yours too."

Sokka runs one hand up the shorn back of his head and blushes. He looks away, and then back again.

"I wish I could have taken you to Winter Ball." Sokka says.

Yue smiles again. _She smiles a lot._ "I couldn't go anyway."

"Oh," Sokka says. "Well, uh, I wish I could have at least asked."

"My dad's waiting for me," Yue says apologetically. "It was nice meeting you."

She turns and walks away, but her presence lingers in the misty air by Sokka's side.

He wonders if he's in love.

\---

Two days later they meet again at the end of the day, outside, in the damp winter evening.

"It's going to snow tonight," Sokka says as an introduction. "Maybe. Probably."

Yue giggles and it makes Sokka understand what writers mean when they say someone's laugh sounds like a ringing bell. She giggles like a Christmas carol. Like wind chimes.

This time, they stand face to face, breathing mist into each other's eyes.

"Sokka," Yue says, making his heart flutter. "I think I really like you."

Sokka feels like he might faint. "I like you too."

"But," she continues. "It won't work out." She turns her head away sadly.

"Can I kiss you?" Sokka asks. "Just once."

"If you're going to kiss me," Yue turns back to face Sokka. "You have to know that I'm dying. I'm going to die."

"Okay." Sokka says.

And then they kiss, outside of school, in the rain, at 3:36 PM.

\---

"It's called chronic graft-versus-host disease," Yue says. "When I was a baby I had a bone marrow transplant. Then the disease showed up twelve years later."

"I'm sorry." Sokka says.

They hold hands.


	2. monday (fall through the cracks)

Sokka never ever expects good news when someone shows up in the middle of class to talk to him. To be fair, he only has one experience to base that assumption on, but it's enough, isn't it?

Yue dies on a Monday morning. She missed the start of the second semester, which is how Sokka knew that it was bad. Like, _bad_ bad. He called her dad, and he said no visitors.

Sokka sits in the counseling office, kicking the back of his heels against the chair. He tries to keep time with the clock that hangs on the dusty yellow wall. _Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk._ He knows he's annoying the counselor, who he has been avoiding eye contact with for the past five minutes, and he does it on purpose.

"Can you talk to me, Sokka?" The counselor asks with a well-rehearsed sympathetic tone.

"I want to talk to my dad." Sokka seethes. _Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Th-_

"Please don't scuff up my chair." The counselor says. Sokka stops.

Hakoda comes and takes Sokka home and Sokka does not talk to him. Instead, he goes straight to his room and lays down, still wearing shoes. It starts raining outside.

\---

When Sokka wakes up, the rain has stopped, and ruddy sunset light is flooding his small, messy room. He can smell dinner cooking across the hallway, and he isn't hungry. He actually doesn't feel much of anything at all. He's only barely aware of the sensation of his body on the mattress and the fact that his legs are cramped from sleeping in jeans. Gross.

In the kitchen, on the other side of the house, the warm sunset doesn't make it in. Instead the sky outside is dark and the room is illuminated by a neutral overhead lamp.

"I'm really sorry, Sokka." Katara says.

"Hm." Sokka replies and pushes spaghetti back and forth on his plate.

Hakoda whistles tunelessly and nobody says anything else. The evening is so uncomfortable and strained and bad that Sokka gets up after about fifteen minutes and goes straight back to bed.

Here's what Sokka dreams about: he's walking alone on this empty gravel road somewhere in Alaska, and he keeps tripping and falling into snowbanks. Every time he gets up, he feels a couple of his teeth come loose, and his mouth gets all nasty and crumbly and he can't spit out the pieces of teeth so he just keeps walking. He knows he's trying to get somewhere really, really important, and he knows he's going to get there late, but he has to get there no matter what. Eventually, though, he falls into a snowbank that he can't get himself out of. The last of his teeth fall out and he tries to pick them out of the snow, but gives up quickly. _Whatever,_ he thinks, _I'll get dentures._

Sokka doesn't remember this when he wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have you ever had a dream that you, um, you had,,
> 
> for the record i have the last 4 chapters of this fic already written i just need to write the middle parts lol. bear with me <3


	3. tuesday (slightly out of reach)

His alarm still goes off on Tuesday morning. Same as always, singing happily at 7:15. The sound doesn't match the rest of the morning. It's only barely light outside, the thick grey fog bumps against the windowpanes, and the wind is moody and vengeful.

Also, Sokka's girlfriend died alone in a hospital bed yesterday.

Okay, so she probably wasn't actually alone. Her dad and doctors and stuff. But without Sokka there (in Sokka's opinion, at least,) she might as well have been the only person in the building. He thinks about this and crumples up under the blanket, letting the alarm ring as long as it wants to.

Katara walks into the room without knocking or turning on the light. "Dad says we can stay home from school," she says. "So."

"So." Sokka mutters from his cocoon.

Katara comes and turns Sokka's alarm off. Now the only sound is the wind whipping against the side of the house, battering the vinyl siding with atmospheric fury. It rattles the entire building.

If Sokka was seven years old on this day, he would have been scared. He would have wrapped himself up in a blanket, trotted down the stairs, and crawled into his parents' bed. Mom would be there, and she would pull him up next to her and tell him that it was only the wind. They would be safe and comfortable and they would watch early morning TV on the fuzzy, sputtering old tube perched on the left side of the dresser.

Instead, Sokka is sixteen years old on this day, and he just stares blearily at the back of Katara's head as she walks away. He tries to think about Yue, but his mind feels just as fuzzy as the old TV, and, also like it, eventually gives up. He rolls over and goes back to sleep.

Outside, the wind eventually dies down, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i figured out how to change my icon. enjoy
> 
> this chapter is short but whatever at least it doesn't have italics in it


	4. wednesday (the record echoes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for late i was depressed
> 
> this is a short chapter which is why i'm posting two today. enjoy

Wednesday is the kind of day that’s really worth forgetting. The kind of day where dreams and reality blend together. Sokka doesn’t know when he wakes up or when he goes to bed or even how many times he falls asleep throughout the day. It’s just twenty-four equally shitty hours that all average out into a muddy grey blur.

“Funeral’s on Friday,” someone says. “Don’t need to dress up too much. This is the West Coast, after all.”

Maybe Sokka eats something at some point and he watches something on his phone and he takes a nap and he stares at the wall. Maybe he just thinks about doing all these things. There’s not really a difference anymore, when it takes just as much effort to imagine yourself getting out of bed as it does to actually do it.

People ask if he needs anything, and he thinks _yeah, I need Yue back, and I need Mom back, and I need to know why people die, and I need things none of you can give me_ and he shakes his head no.

Letters come in the mail and cars drive by outside and Sokka is frustrated because nothing has changed. Why haven’t there been earthquakes and tsunamis and people wailing in the streets and an indefinite pause on day-to-day life? Why is it only him that feels this way? Why does he have to feel all the sadness? If Sokka could pour all of that sadness into the rest of the Earth, evenly distribute it amongst all the people and animals and trees and rocks and particles of dust on the planet, maybe it would take enough of the weight off his shoulders for him to get out of bed and put on a clean pair of pants. Instead all he can do is pour the sadness into uncomfortable pillows, and it doesn’t lessen the load enough to even matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fic is fully written now so i'll be posting the rest of the chapters uhh whenever i feel like it


	5. thursday (own what you are)

Sokka and Suki meet at the edge of town at four in the afternoon. School has ended for the day, even though neither of them went.

They sit on a low concrete wall facing the river. Suki rolls her skateboard back and forth under the tips of her toes, back and forth, back and forth, a comfortable rhythm, and the vocals of this song are the distant conversations of strangers on the riverwalk. The rustling of leaves. Seagulls.

"I don't know what I should do," Suki says. "I have a lot to say, but…" she trails off, staring at the sunset shimmering on the river.

"But what?" Sokka says. Suki turns to look at him. She's not wearing makeup, she doesn't wear makeup anymore, and she looks tired. Sokka thinks she's beautiful, of course, always beautiful, but this isn't the time to talk about it.

Instead of talking, he reaches towards her face, slowly, and very gently brushes a fallen eyelash off her cheek.

"Thanks," she says, and turns away. Then turns back again, but does not make eye contact. "Sokka, listen, I have to tell you this. I'm sorry. But, um… I kind of had a crush on Yue."

Sokka tries to look at Suki's downturned eyes, but she avoids him. "I… she didn't know," Suki continues in a carefully controlled tone of voice. "I never told her. I don't know if I was ever going to. And, you know, I didn't want to break you guys up. It was just…" she lets her voice taper off into the wind again, and inhales deeply. "Just in case. But God, that makes it sound mean. I sound like a player. I'm sorry."

Sokka nods. "I get it. I get it, Suki. It's okay." He puts one hand on her shoulder reassuringly. Suki leans into it.

"This is gonna sound fucked up, but, sometimes, I feel glad that I didn't actually have to make that decision at all. And that she didn't have to make that decision. Like… the universe just decided for us, and sometimes it feels good to not be responsible for anything."

She still keeps her eyes away from Sokka, staring resolutely at the soggy brown leaves that coat the sidewalk. "It's not normal, is it? To not feel responsible when someone dies? It seems like, in movies and stuff, if your friend dies, all you ever think about is what you could have done to save them."

"I don't know if there even is a normal," Sokka responds. "I feel responsible. I really do. Like, somehow I could have protected her from fucking graft-versus-host disease. I'm a cliche of the greatest order." He sighs. "Do you want to swap feelings?"

"I think we are," and Suki finally meets Sokka's eyes again. She smiles, just a little. "Talking to other people is just mixing all your feelings together." She rests her head on Sokka's shoulder.

They don't say any more that evening. They sit on the damp concrete and Suki rolls her skateboard and Sokka picks at the skin under his nails and they let their feelings bleed silently into each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actually wrote this chapter first and it's probably the best one lol. can you tell i am better at writing dialogue scenes than whatever else


	6. friday (the ocean washed over your grave)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yall thought i forgot about this fic? cause i did

Crocuses start blooming.

"Daylight savings starts soon." Hakoda says to nobody. Maybe he says it to the half-rolled-down window of his rain-washed pickup, or to the grey water that runs under the bridge they're crossing.

"Is this the one where we get an extra hour of sleep?" Aang asks. "Or the one where we lose it?"

"I think it's the one where we lose it." Sokka answers.

Katara doesn't say anything.

The drive is silent until they roll into a gravel parking lot, where the sound of the ocean is thunderous and the sky is pallid and empty. There, when Sokka opens his door into a wooden pole, he says: "shit."

And then they walk down to the beach. The sand is damp and compact, tiny particles of quartz glistening in the muddy beige sediment. There are no raindrops, but a light fog hangs in the air and dampens the procession as they trudge to the shoreline.

Sokka takes stock. Yue's parents are there. Some other family members, probably cousins. Grandparents, or great-aunts-and-uncles, maybe. A baby in a black smock. Also, the school counselor. Assorted teachers, none of whom Sokka knows by first name, at least. Suki, and everyone else in the school dance troupe. Toph and Toph's parents and the lady that follows Toph around at school (she stands on the other side of the group.) A girl named Kori who's in Sokka's precalc class. Zuko and his uncle. No father. Azula, surprisingly, and two of her private school friends. A doctor and three nurses. A table with a framed photo of Yue and two boxes of tissues.

"It's small," Sokka muses aloud. "I don't know what I expected, though."

"Yeah," Katara agrees quietly. "I think it would feel… ingenuine if it was big. Like, everyone from school? Three hundred freshman that have barely heard of her? The Coast Guard? I don't know. I think this is good."

"Yeah." Sokka says, and then they're quiet again. They merge into the larger group of funeral-goers like droplets absorbed into a pool of dark, depressed water.

"Maybe it should have been sunny." Aang says.

"We can't make it be sunny," Katara retorts. "And… even if…" she trails off and looks around at the crowd.

She doesn't finish whatever thought she had because Yue's father starts talking. It's a very long speech, basically a biography. Sokka doesn't listen. He knows it's rude, but he doesn't think he needs to listen. He knows Yue.

He knew Yue.

The speech concludes and Yue's parents throw a bag of ashes into the sea. It doesn't feel like anything to Sokka. It doesn't feel real, and once the waves pull the pale dust away, it doesn't feel like it happened at all.


	7. saturday (parking lot)

Sokka walks to the grocery store to buy a drink, and then he decides to hang around at the edge of the property. He shifts his weight from left to right, balancing on a concrete ledge, and he thinks he could learn to live with the teenage bum lifestyle. He sets his empty can of green tea on the ground, next to a flattened, waterlogged cardboard box that says "THIS SIDE UP" in smeared inky letters.

He doesn't really notice when a black car with a broken passenger-side door handle pulls up. Well, he notices the broken passenger-side door handle, because it's a safety hazard. But he doesn't really notice the rest of the scene.

"What are you doing here?" Zuko snarls.

Sokka turns his neck sharply and stares. "What are you doing here?" He calls back. There's maybe a ten foot distance between them.

"This is my _job_ ," Zuko retorts. "I _work here._ "

"Oh," Sokka says, then: "I thought your family was loaded! Why are you working nights at a _Safeway?_ "

"I'm emancipated." Zuko says, opening a back entrance while still facing towards Sokka. The door opens and the yellow light spills out, casting Zuko's face into silhouette. He turns around and locks the door.

Sokka waits outside for four hours.

When Zuko finally comes out, he looks even more tired than usual. In the unflattering luminance of a stark white lamp placed above the door, Sokka sees the sunken, purple valleys under his eyes. The creases mapped across his face.

"Stop staring at me!" Zuko yells, hunching up his shoulders and turning to the side. "Have you been sitting out here the whole night _stalking me?_ "

"No!" Sokka insists. "No. I just didn't really… feel the need to go anywhere else."

The two of them are silent while the light and nearby electrical equipment quietly buzzes.

"I'm sorry about Yue," Zuko says. "She was in my history class."

"Is that it? History class?" Sokka says gruffly, then sighs and puts his hands around his temples. "Sorry. I'm not actually angry at you. I'm angry at life for giving us such an amazing and kind and beautiful person who didn't live long enough to be known for anything more than being in history class. Fuck."

Zuko rustles his car keys for a few seconds, then stops. "I know how you feel," he says. "Sometimes… sometimes I think about my mom, and all I can remember are things like, 'we went to see Ratatouille in the theater', and then I get mad at myself, because, really, I can't remember anything more important than that?"

"Ratatouille was a good movie," Sokka says. "I would have remembered it too."

Zuko huffs. "We always want people to be more than they were," he says. "And they won't."

Another quiet pause, this time filled with the sound of pigeons rustling in their nests built in the gutter.

"Why did you go to the funeral?" Sokka asks.

Zuko makes an indistinct sound, followed by: "I…" he lets the syllable float off into the night. Exhales deeply. "I came to see the people. I came to see everyone who cared about her. Just to make sure that… that people did care. That they didn't forget about her."

Sokka purses his lips together and nods. "Okay," he says. "But why did your evil sister go?"

Zuko chuckles a little. "I couldn't tell you. Maybe she just enjoys it. Like the fucking Addams Family or something."

Sokka lets out a full laugh, a real laugh, and Zuko chuckles more underneath. Then the silence creeps back in, a natural inhabitant of a Safeway parking lot at ten past midnight.

"Let me tell you something," Zuko says. "My mom never got a funeral. She's not… legally dead. But everyone knows what happened."

"I'm sorry." Sokka says.

Zuko reaches for his keys again, and Sokka turns to look at him.

"Hey," he asks. "Can you drive me home?"

"Okay." Zuko says.

And he does.


	8. sunday (pacific daylight time)

"She told me her hair started going grey when she was thirteen," Sokka says. "That's why she bleached it."

He's laying on his back, arms crossed behind his head, one knee raised higher than the other, hair untied, vulnerable, small, on the beige shag carpet of Suki's attic. Rain pours down outside and Sokka listens with his eyes closed. He can hear water run along the street as it's pulled downhill into a storm drain. He imagines it flows all the way to the open ocean, joining seamlessly with the course of the river, merging together into one unbounded body of water.

"She was in my vision impaired math class," Toph says after an unknown and unacknowledged period of silence. "She was something like sixty percent blind. She told me she'd never get a driver's license."

"She opened my locker for me on my first day of school," Suki says. "When it got stuck."

Sokka opens his eyes just to stare at the ceiling. "You never told me that," he says. "I never knew that."

"I didn't know if it was important," Suki says, answering Sokka's unvoiced question, which is _why didn't you tell me?_ "I mean, is it important? It's just… another moment."

"Are you guys going back to school on Monday?" Toph asks.

"No." Sokka and Suki respond at the same time, without trying.

"Yeah." Aang says.

"Are you?" Katara says.

"No," Toph answers, then pauses. "I don't know if I'm ready to face that empty room."

"It won't be empty empty," Aang says. "Your instructor's there. You're there."

"After a while, everything blends in," Toph responds. "Yue stood out. I liked having her there."

Sokka shuts his eyes again and presses his palms against his eyelids until he sees swirling pressure patterns in the darkness.

"Sokka," Katara asks in a tone that indicates the start of a question. "Do you want to go back to school?"

"I don't know what I want," Sokka says, watching the static sparks form behind his eyelids. He thinks that it's probably bad for him, and he doesn't care. He sits up, knees pulled to his chest. "How do you decide to move on? How do you know when you're ready to move on? How does anybody know?"

Nobody answers but the rain, and the rain says: it's okay to cry. Listen to me cry. Listen.

Sokka listens. He listens to the way the water runs down Suki's roof, into the gutter, into the street, into the river and into the sea. To the end of the world. It pours off the edge of the Earth and falls into nothingness. It turns into mist.

Suki puts her arm on his back. "It's okay," she says.

"I know." Sokka says.

And then he cries like the weight of an entire life is pressing down on him. He doesn't cry beautifully or poetically. He holds his forehead in his hands and screams.

Because he feels weak. Because he feels lost. Because nothing makes sense anymore, and he feels like a child learning about death for the first time again.

While nobody watches, the digital alarm clock on Suki's bedside ticks from 1:59 to 3:00. One hour taken from their lives without permission. Gone forever. And then the clock ticks from 3:00 to 3:01 as if nothing ever happened. It keeps moving forward. It moves forward five minutes before anybody notices that they lost an hour.


	9. epilogue (in silence)

Sokka goes back to school.

Yue never got her driver's license, but Sokka did, and he thinks about her the first time he drives alone down the coastal highway, rain hitting the windshield and wind blowing east through the boughs of the trees.

They hold a spot for Yue at graduation. Show her picture in a slideshow. Somebody plays a violin. And Sokka goes home and listens to trashy indie rock from the year his sister was born because it feels better than the violin. It feels real in a way that so many things haven't, not since he kissed Yue outside school, in the rain, at 3:36 PM.

Sokka and Suki make things official, and then un-official again, and then they stop caring. They just live their lives, colliding occasionally, drifting into romance and back out again without complaint.

Summer bleeds away like a melting candle.

Sokka thinks about Yue for the rest of his life.


End file.
